No farther seek his merits to disclose

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode (There they alike in trembling hope repose), The bosom of his Father and his God."

EPITAPH ON JOHNSON,

BY COWPER.

• Here Johnson lies-a sage by all allow'd,

Whom to have bred may well make England proud :
Whose prose was eloquence, by wisdom taught,
The graceful vehicle of virtuous thought;

Whose verse may claim-grave, masculine, and strong-
Superior praise to the mere poet's song;

Who many a noble sight from Heaven possess'd,

And faith at last, alone worth all the rest.

O man, immortal by a double prize,
By fame on earth-by glory in the skies!"

EPITAPH ON HENRY K. WHITE,

BY BYRON.

No marble marks thy couch of lowly sleep,
But living statues there are seen to weep;
Affliction's semblance bends not o'er thy tomb,
Affliction's self deplores thy youthful doom

Q. Are not letters sometimes written in verse?

A. Frequently; and much excellent poetry has appeared under the character of epistles, particularly from the pen of Pope.

Q. Is the line of distinction between the different descriptions of poetry very clear?

A. Far from it; the one sort runs always less or more into the other; and all the species are, to a cortain extent, entitled to the character of descriptive and didactic, as they are almost all used, in some degree, for the purpose both of describing and teaching.

CHAPTER XV1.

OF THE SONNET.

Q. What is a Sonnet?

A. A short, pointed poem, of fourteen lines, either expressive of some strong feeling, or descriptive of

some striking object; and so constructed, that the first, fourth, fifth, and eighth; the second and third; the sixth, and seventh; the ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth; and the tenth, twelfth, and fourteenth lines, form rhymes with each other.

Q. Can you give an example of a sonnet?

A. The following, "To Sleep," is a very fine specimen of one from Wordsworth:

"A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by,

One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds, and seas,
Smooth fields; white sheets of water, and pure sky;
I thought of all by turns, and yet I lie

Sleepless! and soon the small birds' melodies
Must hear, first utter'd from my orchard trees,
And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry.
Even thus last night, and two nights more, I lay
And could not win thee, Sleep! by any stealth,
So do not let me wear to-night away.

Without Thee, what is all the morning's wealth!
Come, bless'd barrier between day and day,

Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health."

Q. Is the sonnet a common species of poetry?

A. It is far from being common in English; but n is frequently to be met with in Italian.

Q. To what is this difference owing?

A. To the circumstance chiefly of the Italian language being better adapted to this kind of poetry than the English.

Q. Can you mention some of the most distinguished writers of sonnets?

A. Petrarch stands at the head of the Italian sonneteers; while Shakspeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, are the most distinguished among the English.

Q. Why should a sonnet be confined to fourteen lines rather than any other number?

A. "The quota of lines (says Montgomery), and the arrangement of rhymes and pauses, already established in the regular sonnet, have been deemed, after the experience of five centuries, incapable of improvement by extension or reduction; while the form itself has been proved to be the most convenient and grace ful that ever was invented, for disclosing, embellishing, and er. compassing the noblest or the loveliest, the gayest or the graves. idea, that genius, in its happiest moments of rapture or of melan choly, could inspire. The employment of this form by the fines Italian poets, for expressing, with pathos and power irresistible

their selectest and purest conceptions, is an argument of fact against all speculative objections, in favor of the intrinsic excellence and unparalleled perfection of the sonnet."

He adds:

"Mr. Wordsworth has redeemed the English language from the opprobrium of not admitting the legitimate sonnet in its se verest, as well as its most elegant construction. The following, though according to the strictest precedents, and therefore the least agreeable to unaccustomed ears, is full of deep harmony, strong sentiment, and chastened, yet impassioned feeling. The Tyrolese, amid their Alpine fastnesses, are represented as returning this lofty answer to the insulting demand of unconditional surrender to French invaders. If their own mountains had spoken, they could not have replied more majestically.

"The land we, from our fathers, had in trust,

And to our children will transmit, or die;

This is our maxim, this our piety,

And God and Nature say that it is just :

That which we would perform in arms we must'
We read the dictate in the infant's eye,

In the wife's smile; and in the placid sky,

And at our feet, amid the silent dust

Of them that were before us. Sing aloud
OLD SONGS-the precious music of the heart!
Give, herds and flocks, your voices to the wind,
While we go forth, a self-devoted crowd,

With weapons in the fearless hand, to assert
Our virtue, and to vindicate mankind."

I See the sketch of Wordsworth, Part VI., sec. xxiii. |

CHAPTER XVII.

THE LITERARY MERIT AND STYLE OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE.

[Dr. G. Spring, of New-York, in a recent course of lectures, has presented this subject in a just and striking light. The following remarks are gleaned from one of his lectures.]

THE world is filled with books that are the product of the mightiest sons of genius; but they are sterile and jejune, deformed and ungainly, in comparison with the riches of thought, the extent of research, the accuracy, the grace, and beauty which distinguish the Bible.

Without the Scriptures, the world would be profoundly ignorant of some of the most important and interesting points of historical inquiry. The narrative of Moses completely covers that period of history which, with other nations, is called fabulous, and which is merged in the regions of fabrication and conjecture.

There are multitudes of facts and phenomena, both in the natural and moral world, that never could be accounted for, but for the Mosaic history. The Bible is the great source and standard of ancient chronology. It may, indeed, be justly considered as the standard of a polished and useful litera

ture.

The characteristic style of the Bible is, that it is always adapted to the subjects of which it speaks. A chaste, nervous diction distinguishes all its compositions. It is strongly marked by its simplicity, its strength, and often its unrivaled sublimity and beauty. Its manner of writing, with regard to the choice and arrangement of words, is at all times dignified and serious, and at a great remove from the pomp and parade of artificial ornament. Every where we see that its great object is to inculcate truth, and that it uses words only to clothe and render impressive the thoughts it would convey. There is both rhetoric and inspiration in the Bible; but amid all the boldness and felicity of its inventions, there is no over-doing-no making the most of every thing-no needless comment - but every thing is plain, concise, and unaffectedly simple.

In the historical compositions of the Scriptures, we have the most simple, natural, affecting, and well-told narratives in the world. For impartiality and fidelity, unvarnished truth, choice of matter, unity, concise and graphic descriptions of character, and, above all, its usefulness, the historical parts of the Bible are without a parallel. The characters walk and breathe. They are nature, and nothing but nature. By a single stroke of the pencil you often have their portrait. You see them-you hear them. And hence the finest subjects for historic painting within the circle of the Fine Arts have been selected from the Scriptures. The best artists have awarded to them this distinguished honor, and one reason why they have done so obviously is, that profane history furnishes no such themes.

And what is there to equal the didactic and argumentative portions of the Scriptures, furnished by the prophets, or in the discourses of our Savior and the epistles of Paul? Read the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of Matthew, the third, fourth, fifth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth chapters of John, the eighth and eleventh of Romans, the fifteenth of 1 Corinthians, the thirty-eighth, thirty-ninth, fortieth, and forty-first of Job. No where, out of the Bible, can be found passages of equal force, sublimity, and simpli city. Their flowers do not fade, nor does their fruit lose

its freshness. They are always new, and more and more deeply interest a classical mind, the oftener they are read and the better they are known.

In reference to the poetical parts, where is there poetry that can be compared with the song of Moses, at his victory over Pharaoh; with the Psalms of David, and with the prophecies of Isaiah, and some others? Where is there an elegiac ode to be compared with the song of David upon the death of Saul and Jonathan, or the Lamentations of Jeremiah? Like the rapid, glowing argumentations of Paul, the poetic parts of the Bible may be read a thousand times, and they have all the glow and freshness of the first perusal. Where, in the compass of human language, is there a paragraph, which, for boldness and variety of metaphor, delicacy and majesty of thought, strength and invention, elegance and refinement, equals the passage in which "God answers Job out of the whirlwind?" I can not but love the poetic associations of the Bible. Now, they are sublime and beautiful, like the mountain torrent, swollen and impet uous by the sudden bursting of the cloud. Now, they are grand and awful as the stormy Galilee, when the tempest beat upon the fearful disciples. And, again, they are placid as that calm lake when the Savior's feet have pressed upon its waters and stilled them into peace.

English literature is no common debtor to the Bible. There is not a finer character, nor a finer description in all the works of Walter Scott, than that of Rebekah, in Ivanhoe. And who does not see that it owes its excellence to the Bible? Shakspeare, Milton, Bryant, Young, and Southey, are not a little indebted for some of their best scenes and inspirations to the same source.

May it not be doubted, whether scholars have been sufficiently sensible of their obligations to our common English Bible? It is the purest specimen of English, or anglo-Saxon, to be found in the world. As a model of style, “it is," says Cheever, "pure, native, uncorrupted, idiomatic Eng. lish. It is the best preservation of our language in all our literature. It has most of the old, honest, simple, vigorous, expressive Saxon, which is the main body of the excellence of our language." Addison has remarked, that "there is a certain coldness in the phrases of European languages, compared with the Oriental forms of speech; that the English tongue has received innumerable improvements from an infusion of Hebraisms, derived from the practical passages in